


Take It From The Top

by doortotomorrow



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Heavy Drinking, Hurt/Comfort, Musicians, Rock and Roll, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:42:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28071156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doortotomorrow/pseuds/doortotomorrow
Summary: John Murphy's music career might as well be dead. Night after night of playing in shady, out in the middle of nowhere bars with hardly anyone in attendance has him seriously considering pulling the plug...however, a once in a lifetime encounter gets him thinking otherwise.
Relationships: Emori & John Murphy (The 100), Emori/John Murphy (The 100)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Take It From The Top

**Author's Note:**

> It's been ages since I've written fanfiction for Memori, but then inspiration struck and this is the end result. I think it's also the longest thing I've written for Memori, too, so I'm proud of that milestone. Anyway, enough of my rambling...on with the fic!

“Not a half bad show tonight, Mr. Murphy. Sorry we couldn't pack every seat in the house, but who knows? Maybe next time,” Murphy's manager's repulsive, much too saccharine sounding voice was the first thing to hit his ear after his dumpster fire of a set. The fact he wasn't chased out of there having empty beer bottles lobbed in his direction was the only small comfort he yielded from the miserable experience he just had.

“Yeah...next time,” Murphy replied, pushing past his slimy, incompetent manager who had begun to make uncouth gestures at one of the attractive stage hands (he was so getting fired for this epic shit-show). Murphy made a sharp turn for the dingy, grungy looking dressing room the establishment so graciously offered and almost broke the paint chipped door right off its rusty hinges when he slammed it shut behind him. Murphy barreled over to the worn out, threadbare couch, planting himself down and sunk his face into the palms of his hands. Why was he doing this? What worth was there in performing for people? Just...why? Murphy's vision blurred, sight filled to the brim with so many questions about the future of his music career. 'Future? What future?' Murphy posing a question to himself out in the open, splayed himself out on the couch, and stared for an exorbitant amount of time at the dark brown water stain above his head on the ceiling. 

Footsteps outside the door jostled him from his empty, vacuous ceiling examination, making Murphy rise to attention in thinking it was his manager...but the voices on the other side proved otherwise, and Murphy loathed how tissue paper thin the walls were at this dive bar because what he heard was the absolute last thing he ever wanted to hear.

“Do you have that, 'I want the last hour of my life back', feeling, too?”

“I'm being charitable here when I say I hope this is just a hobby for this poor sucker. There's no way in fuck he's gonna make a living out of this job, so he better have a fallback plan to catch him when he tanks.”

“What was he thinking breaking off from Ill Intent?! Actually, in the end, Bellamy might end up thanking him for it, because if that's what he's capable of on his own...he's much better off.”

Murphy sat there and scrutinized his hands, swearing he saw the skin and muscle around the bones of his fingers wither and decay in response to their incriminating review of his art. The distant thumping of their heavy footsteps joined in time with his gaining heartbeat, and a sickening cold sweat broke out along his hairline in his growing panic. An agonizing throbbing lodged itself in the middle of this throat, making it hard for him to breathe and Murphy unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt, but nothing changed. Anxiety had him by the jugular in a vicious choke-hold, and Murphy was incapable of fighting it off. Gritting his teeth, he staved off the desire to burst into tears the best he could manage. Like a dying star having run out of fuel to continue living, Murphy withdrew into himself, appearing smaller and smaller, until finally...

“FUCK YOU!! FUCK. YOU. ALL!!” Murphy detonated, climbing to his feet and flipping the table in front of him where hundreds of signed copies of his solo album rested upon. In a blind rage, Murphy went so far as to crush them underneath his heavy duty, black steel-toe boots. Everything Bellamy forewarned Murphy about when he made his arrogant speech in breaking away from Ill Intent, determined to make it on his own had happened. From the low attendance at his gigs, the questionable quality of the places he played at, the sharp decline in views on his YouTube uploads, the massive loss of Twitter and Instagram followers, the infrequent playlist notifications on Spotify, to the dismal reviews...it all happened. After he just about screamed himself hoarse, Murphy stumbled back and sunk far into the vile, stained couch cushions, crushed beyond belief.

Self confidence utterly annihilated and decimated, Murphy flashed through all the stages of grief and arrived at acceptance. They were right. He had nothing more to give to them or himself for that matter, so he may as well call it quits. In his bid to commit to said retirement from the music industry, Murphy hopped off the couch and fished through his tattered, barely there denim jacket(such a timely metaphor for all his failings), and extracted his wallet out of the left hand pocket. Making note of how much bank he had, Murphy abandoned the mess he made, walking towards the only other thing he longed to do tonight...drink.

The low, almost pitch dark ambience of the rotting place at least provided Murphy proper cover from having people stare at him like he was a monkey at the zoo. Thank the fuck god for the tiniest of miracles. Murphy propped his sagging bones on the furthest stool on the right of the bar, making himself look as nondescript as feasibly possible, and ordered up a whisky sour when the bartender approached him. When his drink arrived, Murphy, in an instant, knocked it back like it wasn't even there. The bartender moved to make another, but Murphy stalled his return trip, gaze focusing into a harsh glare and smacked down a whole fifty dollar bill on the bar table.

“Leave the bottle.”

The bartender wavered, on the verge of protest, and then an extra twenty bucks joined with the fifty as Murphy affixed his entire focus to the freshly opened bottle of whisky, giving him no quarter and refused him any space to turn him down. 

“Fine then, if you want to be puking your guts out, that's your business,” he said, grumbling as he stomped away and made a hasty retreat out of Murphy's foul orbit, unwilling to linger there for a minute longer. A long, low and drawn out sigh trickled out of Murphy's mouth as he settled himself onto his stool, throwing back another stiff shot golden brown booze. His pointer finger circled around the rim of the glass and hypnotized himself by gently rocking the glass side to side, causing the remaining droplets to trace along the radius of the stout tumbler. He poured another. Lifting his glass to his lips and downing another mouthful, Murphy scanned the room at all the nameless, featureless denizens of the bar in the highest degree of disgust he could manage. 

These brainless fuckers who kept on demanding and requesting he play Ill Intent songs all night didn't have a clue about all the shady, sketchy shit that went down in between him and the rest of the boys, and the harsh reality of that fact set the blood working through his veins ablaze, almost blistering his skin on the outside. He couldn't stand Ill Intent, he couldn't stand everyone in this skanky, out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere bar, he couldn't stand his greasy, sleazeball of a manager, and harshest of all was he couldn't stand himself. Murphy could hardly dare to take a look at himself in the mirror for he despised and loathed what he saw. Yeah...he was making his father REAL proud of him, alright. This is the precise place and situation Alex Murphy wanted to see his son end up in. Getting wasted along with his potential. 

A dreadful, sinister thought wriggled through his gut like a worm and slithered up his spine and into his brain, seducing him and appealing to his base desires. Murphy focused on the grand piano up on the stage, boring holes into it with his furious glare and visualized what it'd be like to burn this motherfucker to cinders. To watch the crowd scatter and stampede out the door like spooked cattle, to let the smoke flood in, to watch the fire faeries dance in the midnight sky. Yeah, a perfect showstopper if he ever thought of one. However, unlike his childhood self who started a fire in his school's secretary office on a dare, he suppressed the urge with another swig of whisky. He wasn't in the mood to play in a jailhouse rock.

His senses had gotten so dulled by liquor, he barely registered the tapping on his shoulder, and thinking it was his useless load of a manager, rotated on his stool with a unnerving grimace prepped and ready to go. 

“What the fuck do you wa-” Murphy's incoming tirade ground itself to a complete halt at the feet of the person who stood in front of him. Fuck. Holy shit. Have mercy.

Out of the murky shadows, arrived what might as well be a signal flare landing at his feet, dispersing the gloom around him. Lady Venus herself had entered his orbit, wearing shiny, obsidian, thigh high boots on her feet gilded with silver eyelets and white laces. She owned a pair of svelte yet sturdy legs in smooth, tight black leggings, and wrapped around her petite waist were two thin, finger width belts(one yellow, one orange). She wore a black tank top with a silver chain and pendant dangling in between her cleavage, finishing off her bombshell ensemble. Murphy's eyes fluttered up from her body, and the sight of her ethereal, exquisite features almost got him to drop his tumbler to the floor. Her smoky eye shadow and charcoal eyeliner brought so much attention to her vibrant, amber brown eyes, and her tantalizing, cupid's bow lips were stained in a velvety smooth, red wine lipstick. On her right cheek was a faint, well healed scar, getting him to wonder what the story behind it was. If this was a divine intervention, sign him the fuck up.

“You're...you're John Murphy, right?” 

Fuck, how long had he been ogling her for? A few minutes? More? Murphy couldn't tell, because almost everything surrounding him had decelerated into a smeared, oily, abstract painting, leaving only her to focus on. Murphy brushed his hand down his face, getting rid of the cobwebs upstairs in the attic and blinked numerous times to make himself appear relatively sober and lucid.

“That's what it says on my driver's license, last time I checked.”

His brusque comment impacted, getting her to huff out a breath of bemused laughter, appearing unsure of how to react. Murphy could tell she was halfway nervous in his presence, and for the life of him, he didn't know why.

“It's the last thing you want to hear 'cause I know how much shit went down between you and the other guys of Ill Intent, and you probably wanna retch at hearing their names, but...” she pulled out a small, partially damaged promotional postcard of himself that came with the deluxe edition of Ill Intent's debut album a few years back along with a metallic, silver sharpie from her purse, “could you sign this for me? Also, if it's not too big of a hassle, can I get a signed copy of your solo album? I just went and bought one from your manager over there,” pointing to the asshole in the starched, light grey suit stinking of cheap cologne. 

If she hadn't have been so genuine and sincere with her politeness, Murphy would've said to her:  
“I hope you're familiar with the saying, 'don't meet your heroes', because I'm a prime example of that...fuck off”, but he couldn't bear to see the cute smile on her face crumble, so he humored her and signed her somewhat frayed merchandise.

“Who am I making this out to?”

The dream of a woman picked up the blue jewel from her necklace and rubbed the facets in her hand, smile growing more luminous by the ticks of the clock, and Murphy picked up the sound of her leather boots getting stretched and pulled in reaction to the light bouncing she was doing. 

“Emori Comrie.”

Emori Comrie : the name of his savior.

“Thanks for stopping by and listening to me play...I-it's appreciated,” Murphy toasted her with his virtually empty glass, hoping the droning white noise of the murmuring voices in the seedy bar covered up the obvious crack in his speech. Fucking hell, what was the matter with him? He was a man in his twenties, not some hapless pubescent teenager, so why in the fuck did she have this level of control over him in just an exchange of small talk? Emori gestured with her right hand, directing his attention to the bar stool beside him and Murphy's pulse quickened, wishing this meant what he thought it meant...he had to ask just to make sure.

“Wanna sit with me?”

“Love to,” Emori responded, heavy boots knocking up against the stool's metal legs as she hoisted herself up, meeting his soft, keen gaze with a reciprocal, gentle smile. Murphy, completely charmed by her, pushed over his bottle of booze and in a much more approachable manner, requested an empty tumbler from the bartender. They shared a beat of companionable silence between them as Emori acquired her glass, pouring just enough whisky in the glass to reach her ring finger. The muted beat grew and extended outward, and created a now increasingly more awkward wedge in the middle of each other, and try as he might, the words Murphy ached to say were lodged up in his throat, nearly cutting off the air to his brain. He was drowning in everything unsaid.

“You were always my favourite, by the way...from Ill Intent? Whenever...” Emori paused to take an apprehensive breath, eyes honing in on her drink and steeled herself, “I listened to you in my bedroom, I would always feel more awake when your solo sections kicked in. Made me feel better about the shit going on my life,” Emori finished, tossing back the rest of her drink, and her eyes of ageless, ancient amber collided with his beleaguered, battle-worn blues, saying far more than words could do. 

“Before I saw you sitting here, I was about to leave and grab a burger and fries across the street. Want to come with? I'm sensing you need some company.”

Murphy swore he heard a slot machine read triple sevens in his mind with the overhead screen displaying the words, 'jackpot', behind a hailstorm of confetti, but then his heart sank...even his drunken, half-there state, he knew he'd be breaking a cardinal rule. As much as it broke him, he had to say no.

“Flattered by the attention and the show of interest, but I don't date fans.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Murphy's forehead crinkled up something fierce, outright growling in reaction to the intense light beating down on him. He rolled over onto his back and the beams of the morning sun continued to mercilessly bore holes into his skull, disorienting him and causing his bedroom to shift and sway around him. Last night...did it really happen? It had to have been a drunken hallucination because there was absolutely no way in fucking hell he'd ever be so lucky as to have crossed paths with someone as gorgeous as the woman he encountered yesterday's eve. Murphy made a feeble attempt at getting out of his bed, but the task proved impossible for his mattress had transformed itself into a magnet, locking him into place. 

He was in dire need of a glass of water and a big ole injection of ibuprofen in his veins to ward off the stabbing sensation going on in the back of his head. He admonished his past self for imbibing in that level of alcohol. Getting blackout drunk, especially in THAT volatile, unpredictable neighborhood, was a good way of potentially winding up with a knife in the gut. Now that he had begun to think more clearly, Murphy started to wonder how he even managed to get back home safe and in one piece(disparaging comments about his music not withstanding), and with a massive amount of effort, forced himself to sit up and started to recollect his memories.

Before Murphy had the opportunity to stumble down memory lane, a resonant, full bodied voice caught his attention as he finally registered he wasn't by himself. He looked down, taking stock of what he was wearing, and catalogued everything he wore last night(sans denim jacket and steel-toe boots) still remained on his person. 'That's a fuckin' relief', Murphy thought, combing his matted, tangled hair with his fingers, and gave his scalp a thorough massage before traipsing out of his bedroom to find the source of the singing he was hearing. Whoever it was, their contralto was something out of this world, transforming the snarling, gnarled lyrics into a sizzling, bluesy riff that burned on contact in the best way possible. Trying to be stealthy, Murphy slipped out of his bedroom, using careful, muted footsteps and carried himself down the hall towards his kitchen.

There, swaying her hips side to side like a human metronome, and locked into rocking along with the music coming out of her phone was Emori behind the counter, appearing to be waiting for the coffee machine to finish brewing her morning mugful. The corner of Murphy's mouth tugged into a crooked grin at the realization she was singing along to the lone solo song he had on Ill Intent's first album, and decided to dwell in the doorway a little longer to watch her performance. Holy shit, she was slaughtering it. Every single note? Pitch perfect and his spine tingled at how beautifully her voice harmonized with his. Emori, letting the music seep into her frame, dragged her hand down her chest, shut her eyes up tight, tilted her head back and threw everything she had in her tiny body into the last repetition of the chorus, brow wrinkling as her voice cut through the air like a knife. Murphy resisted the urge to give her a round of applause, allowing Emori to bask in the afterglow of her performance a few beats longer, blown away at the sheer force her voice had. 

“Every artist appreciates a well done cover...thank you.”

A loud yelp burst out of her mouth, making Emori practically leap all the way to the ceiling and Murphy winced, regretting having spoken up. He had absolutely no intention of scaring her off.

“Sorry. I didn't realize you'd woken up...I thought you'd be out for a least a little while longer,” Emori said in an apologetic tone, smoothing out her wrinkled outfit with her hands, and sought out to reclaim some of her lost dignity and composure. Fat fucking chance of that happening. Emori stared at John looking all disheveled and dehydrated, but even knowing he must have a splitting headache, he had this tender, uncharacteristic smile on his face. Emori's pulse jumped in her throat underneath his heated gaze, wholly confused as to why he was looking at her like that. He was no longer drunk, containing nothing that could cloud his vision, so why the lovey-dovey look pointed in her direction? Curiosity getting the better of her, Emori worked up her nerve, recovering her voice and asked, “why are you looking at me like that?”

“I'm just blown back at how righteous your vocals are. They're so strong, clear, and unchained...” John complimented her, making the hairs at the back of her neck stand to attention, “ever thought of trying out a career in music? As was made so perfectly clear last night, my career's all shot to hell, but you? You could pull it off.” 

Emori burst into laughter, tossing his praise out the window with a wave of her hand, and busied herself by making a mug of coffee, turning away from John to keep him from seeing her flushed face.

“It's whatever, you know? Anyway, aren't you at ALL wondering what happened to you last night?”

Emori derailed the topic, preventing their small talk from becoming focused on her, and put herself on guard unlike last night where alcohol stoked her courage when John crossed the threshold and entered into her personal radius. John raised his arms across his chest, fingers coming up to fiddle with one of the buttons on his dress shirt in contemplation, pulling his shirt down just a tad so that Emori got an eyeful of his chest hair. Her nostrils flared out, hand tensing around the handle of her mug at the sight, and sighed in yearning. Why the other women she knew thirsted after Bellamy when John was standing right there was beyond her. Sure, Bellamy was cute, but he was cute in that big brother kind of way. He didn't have John's dark, charismatic edge which lured her to him like a moth to a flame. 

“I mean, sure...I guess we'll talk about that. Okay, I'll bite. How did we end up back at my place?” John asked, accepting the divergent subject.

“After you told me, 'I don't date fans', you slid off the bar stool and would've broken your face on the cement floor if I hadn't been there to catch you.”

John mouthed an embarrassed, 'fuck', continuing his condemnation of his past self before he nudged Emori with his elbow, gesturing for her to go on telling the rest of the story.

“So I yelled across the room for your manager and asked him where you lived, and called a cab for us. Let me tell you, it was no small chore getting you inside your house thanks to your steep driveway and the stairs leading up to your front door. Talk about a safety hazard,” Emori recalled, “and I don't mean to make things anymore embarrassing, but when I finally finagled my way into your room carrying you, you fell right on top of me like a sack of potatoes when I tried to set you down on your bed,” Emori took a sip of her coffee, “had to wriggle my way free in the most awkward way. Once I knew you were gonna be alright, making sure you wouldn't choke to death if you threw up in your sleep, I was gonna go and request the cab driver take me home, but your manager just up and took off, abandoning me at your place...most likely thought you were fucking me or something, so I found a spot on the couch and fell asleep. There you go; last night abridged for your convenience.”

Emori caught John grimacing, muttering, “gonna fire that useless fucking asshole”, underneath his breath in response. 

“Humiliating as passing out on you was, thanks for taking care of me and not leaving me on a stone cold floor,” John replied. “Going back to your killer vocals, I gotta ask...what's the deal?”

'Here we go again', Emori thought.

Emori, for the first time since John had strolled into his kitchen, averted her gaze and focused on the Christmas card worthy view framed so perfectly outside the spotless, smudge free windows to the left of her. Sitting just a few yards in front of a tree line was a row of your typical, mass produced, nearly identical suburban townhouses with only the house number and parked cars to differentiate between them all. The trees outside were all evergreens, maintaining their deep green pigmentation throughout the winter months, and every one of them was iced with a thick layer of snowy frosting from last night's snowstorm. From this distance, Emori couldn't make out what kind of evergreen trees they were, cedar or pine. Further out, hazy blue on the horizon line, was the iconic Polis skyline, appearing intimidating and daunting with its long spire in the heart of the city. Distracting herself long enough, Emori centered herself back on John and the fingers on her left hand twitched without her intending them to. 

“In more than one producer's eyes, I'm not what you'd call 'market friendly'.”

Emori was rocked by the scandalized expression on John's face. Was he offended on her behalf? The notion of him being indignant over the constant rejection she suffered from had begun to create a rumbling inside of her, threatening to collapse the walls she had so meticulously set up to keep someone like him from getting up close and personal. 

“That's some rancid garbage. Why in the hell wouldn't you sell?” John asked in a tone that suggested he was on the verge of creating a hit list of people to snuff out.

“Might as well show you why...” Emori set her mug down on the counter, raised up her left hand, throat constricting as anxiety and the urge to cry set in, “because when I show you this, you're gonna take back what you've just said.”

“Go right on ahead, because I doubt that's gonna happen.”

With careful consideration and deliberation, Emori had fortified herself enough to unravel the bundle of shawls obfuscating her left hand, raising the limb up to meet her eye level and rotated it so the palm of her hand faced him. Instead of owning a matching left hand to go with her right, Emori's left hand was twice the size, and the webbing between her index and middle finger were tightly stitched together. Her ring finger and her pinky finger were also sewn shut in the same manner, making a permanent, 'live long and prosper', sign with her digits. 

“See? Try and sell this,” Emori set her hand down, and was completely disarmed at his initial reaction...a combination of child-like wonderment and awe had replaced the common repulsed, disgusted response she usually received when anyone saw her hand. Emori swayed back and forth on the balls of her feet, and a flash of heat rushed to her face the longer his gentle eyes lingered on her. 

“Fuck 'em...if I had a sidepiece that badass, I wouldn't keep it under wraps.”

Emori laughed, severing through the tension. If he kept going like this, she was bound to fall in love with him, and then she'd be in serious trouble. 

“How come you didn't say anything about my hand last night?”

John, scratching at the back of his neck, let out a meek, sheepish huff of awkward laughter and skimmed his tongue across the surface of his lips...those enticing, plush lips that Emori couldn't stop looking at.

“To be fair on me, it was really dark in there, and well...” John's eyes scanned her small frame, making Emori's mouth go dry, “I was too busy admiring the parts of you I could see.”

Shit. Oh, shit. She was in for it now. 

“Let's make this an even game,” Emori suggested, bolting down her feelings to the floor, “since I revealed something about myself, I wanna know more about you. I want to know what happened to make you leave Ill Intent, because who in the fuck leaves a band that's JUST had their big break? Tell me what Twitter won't.”

John's eyebrow quirks up, impressed with her candor and need to up the ante.

“Gauntlet's been thrown, I guess. Okay, I'll tell you,” John conceded. “You know how every person in a band has a personality assigned to them?”

Emori bobbed her head, following along with rapt attention.

“The big brother type, the nerdy type, the misunderstood type...” John reached over and refilled Emori's mug for her, “I was the chaotic rebel of the band and before Ill Intent got our foot in the door, I was allowed to get away with pretty much anything I did. Heavy drinking, bar brawls, getting high...there were virtually no limits to what I could do because our niche audience got a kick out of it. That all changed once our time in the spotlight had grown. One drunken fight with a bouncer later, Bellamy lost his shit, and kicked me out. Then, as a last, 'fuck you', to me...” John paused, voice losing a considerable amount of strength as he opened the wound once more, “he took my name off the credits of Ill Intent's second album. I fought like a man possessed to get my name back on there, but nobody had my back because it was my word against Bellamy's, and who do you think people would believe? The one who went out of his way to be Mr. Responsible or the guy you'd most likely see wind up unconscious in a ditch?”

Emori had an uncanny ability when it came to reading people, and judging from the way John withdrew into himself, sounding small and wounded, she could tell right away he was telling her the truth. Her image of who Bellamy Blake was had been forever compromised, leaving a sour and bitter flavor in her mouth. Emori no longer had the desire to drink more coffee, pouring the contents down the sink, and rubbed at her arms like she had caught a chill.

In the wake of exposing their souls to each other, a heavy silence permeated its way through John's living space and Emori padded her bare feet over to John's couch, sinking down into the soft, fluffy cushions. John drifted away from the kitchen, making his way towards the window and watched the clouds float on by, creating random moving shadows over the treetops. He stood there, mind comparatively less bogged down since he spoke his truth to Emori, looking over his shoulder in her direction in immense, unspoken gratitude. She was too good to be true. People like Emori( the extraordinary, supernaturally talented, passionate, and unbelievably gorgeous type) weren't meant to show up in his life, but here she was...real and tangible. He didn't care what it took, he HAD to do something for her...he just didn't know what that particular something was just yet. 

“I wish there was a way, to-I don't know, get some form of justice for what happened to you, but I don't know what that could possibly be,” Emori said while texting her place of work, informing them she needed a sick day to get back to business as usual. John joined Emori on the couch and leaned his head right back, using all of his remaining thought process on what to do to express how thankful he was for her coming to his rescue and then it hit him like a surge of lightning to the system, causing a rare, excited smile to rise up on his face...the single most fantastic idea he'd ever come up with. John's hand intermingled with Emori's, happy she accepted so fast, and took the plunge.

“Hey Emori...want to make music with me?

-SIX MONTHS LATER-

Emori had no idea how she got here. After several years of constantly being told she'd never make it, resigning herself to dream so small and setting her expectations just as low, she had arrived and was minutes away from singing in front of a sold out crowd at Sanctum, the music club where so many legendary artists and bands made their big break into the mainstream. She stared at herself in the mirror and got a good gander at herself. Lips painted cherry red, golden eye-shadow, and eyelashes coated in a layer of rich, jet black mascara completed her regal look. She examined her long, flowing blue dress next, not at all used to revealing so much of her skin to so many people, but rolled with it and hoped she wouldn't topple over in her heels.

“All set to perform?” John asked, standing beside her in their shared dressing room, and adjusted his shirt's collar in the mirror. Channeling his inner Johnny Cash, John went with an all black ensemble, but added in a stunning ocean blue scarf for an accent of colour. 

“Is anyone EVER ready to perform at the Sanctum? What if I stumble on the lyrics halfway through one of our songs? What if they hate us?” Emori fretted, favoring her left hand with her right. John bent down, getting level with Emori and pulled her in for a zealous, fiery kiss, kissing her like there was no tomorrow. Tenderly pulling away from her lips, John cupped Emori's face into his hands and connected his forehead to hers, giving her the sweetest smile he could muster.

“Hey, hey, hey...it doesn't matter at all if they don't like us or if we stumble a little when we're out there playing. Tonight's OUR night, not theirs. We're gonna tear this place to shreds and leave them all in our dust.”

Emori giggled, smiling so much her nose scrunched up and hopped out of her seat, confidence bolstered and held out her arm for John to hold. The last few muffled notes of the opening act followed by the crowd cheering for them was their signal that it was time to come onto the stage, and the duo made their way out of the lavish dressing room, linking each other's arms as they walked down the hallway towards their waiting audience. Emori caught John in the middle of brushing his fingers across the bracelet around his wrist, marking four months of sobriety, and felt an immeasurable amount of pride in him overflow into her chest. She tugged at his sleeve, mouthing the words, 'I love you', at him, receiving them back in the same way.

“Everyone in the crowd, put your hands together for our main act: The Twin Suns!”

John was right...it was their night and tonight, Sanctum was theirs for the taking.


End file.
